Just ten more minutes until the exit polls are announced on the BBC and she bottles it. Instead she asks Philip to watch for her. He understands; was expecting it. Doesn’t need an explanation. Nobody knows her like Philip.

So Philip goes next door to the war room with Lynton and Nick and Fiona while she waits in the flat at Number 11, staring through the glass coffee table to the lucky leopard-skin shoes she has kicked off, finally, after what seems like the longest day.

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She cannot abide the idea that they know – the pollsters, Dimbleby, Laura, Andy Marr. Even Tony bloody Hall has more of an idea about her fate than she does. They will have just had the call from the pollsters. She wonders what they are saying to each other right now, how they are preparing to break the news to the world, and to her, via Philip in the room next door.

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Suddenly, the strangest, stupidest thoughts are firing through her head

The prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and here she sits, by herself, in this freshly decorated flat in the heart of London. The loneliest woman in the world. She likes to think she hides it well, but she is a bag of nerves. Has been all day.

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Suddenly, the strangest, stupidest thoughts are firing through her head: the colour scheme she’d picked – all those beiges and the pale-grey carpet – was supposed to be soothing. But this big bright red sofa she’s sinking into suddenly feels foreboding.

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Red! For a moment the thought that Jeremy Corbyn could have stolen her majority flashes through her mind. Then she slaps herself on the wrist, literally, and tells herself not be so bloody stupid. A red sofa! Honestly, Theresa. Get a grip, woman.

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You see, she’s never been superstitious. Well, apart from those leopard-print shoes. So she pushes the silly thought from her mind and instead plays over the war gaming Nick and Lynton have been talking her through relentlessly for the past few days.

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Three scenarios.

The first: that thumping, great majority. Increasingly, a large part of her feels this isn’t going to happen. She can’t work out if it’s her natural sense of caution or if it’s something more evidence-based.

Plenty has gone wrong – the social care U-turn especially. How she regrets that daft line “nothing has changed”. But once you go with a line in Westminster it’s fatal to reverse. No prizes for honesty these days. Ask Tim Farron.

But keep saying something long enough, over and over and over, and sooner or later the public swallow it. That’s what Lynton’s based his whole career on and it’s never let him down. So who is she to argue?

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Even if the words "strong and stable" feel like they are sticking in her craw like a fishbone. There have been days she’s felt like Paul McKenna, as though she could hypnotise the nation.

She never felt that was Lynton’s best work, but you have to listen to the experts, whatever Michael Gove says. And according to Lynton’s people it’s worked: there are many who think she’s still on for that Maggie-esque triumph.

A flicker of a smile plays across her tightly drawn lips as she recalls that glorious day she and Philip walked off those Welsh hills with conviction in her stride, finally sure the gamble was worth it, all the stress, the relentless effort, the endless exposure.

She is absolutely knackered. Six weeks of campaigning and nothing seemed to go right. But if they hit home with that majority it will all be forgotten; she will be the hero again. And throughout those six weeks she'd watched that curious little man with his new Marks & Sparks suit and red tie, preaching in front of crowds like Billy Graham.

She'd come to respect him, his tenacity, his old-world courtesy. In that regard, they were cut from the same cloth. But she just loved the idea that Corbyn had fallen for his own PR; fallen for all the adulation from those absurd chanting fanatics of his.

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That wouldn’t translate to a row of allotment beans at the ballot box. They didn’t agree on much, but Nick and Lynton agreed on that. The Corbyn effect was a mirage.

She wonders where he is right now. Holed up somewhere in dingy old Islington no doubt. She wonders if he is as nervous as she is? Of course, he’s got so little to lose. Nobody really expects him to do anything but fail. Even he seems perfectly happy with the idea.

That’s the trouble with these revolutionary types. They just love the idea of martyrdom to the cause. Once tonight is over they’ll beatify him and put up a bad portrait in the local Labour Club, and then there’ll be someone new across the ballot box. She wonders who that will be. One of the sensibles or another nutter?

Still, she finds it hard to believe the more optimistic noises around her.

Scenario two:

A decent majority – 50 or 60 seats or so – is a real possibility, and whatever cover story they sell the country in the morning, there is no doubt that this would not be a great result.

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Someone has to, but even he laughed as they played through the numbers. “Theresa, if that happened, then it’s over,” he’d said.

And of course he’s right. If she only manages to secure a handful of extra seats, the party would be out to lynch her. She’d be out on her ear. Boris would be out on manoeuvres quicker than you could say "watermelon smiles".

And as for Brexit, they’d surely have to throw the whole thing up in the air again. Who would know what the hell it was the public wanted?

Only a liar, or a deluded fool, would be able to take a result like that and pretend they had any sort of mandate. And she’s neither of those. She checks herself. Why even think about it? She’s cautious, but she’s not a total pessimist.

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And then... she looks up and is stunned to see the ten minutes have passed. The hour has come around at last. It is ten o’clock. So now she waits, listening for the familiar footsteps of Philip above the pounding of her heart.

She stares at the door handle of that pristine and well-ordered little living room, waiting for it to turn, as, just down the street, the tolling bells of Big Ben fade.